The Blessed Night
by nicky69
Summary: How does one recover from the terrible events that took place in Grave Danger? This is one alternative way for Nick to regain his equilibrium. Betaed by those lovely ladies, elmyraemilie and ilovemycsi. Any mistakes you find are my own.


Cold was something that most people never thought about when their minds turned to the desert. Desert. The very word conjured up visions of heat hazes and burning, barren vistas; a world devoid of life and vitality, empty. However, by night the ostensibly bleak landscape was a very different breed. Freed from the harsh grip of the unforgiving sun, a new world emerged. Under the perpetual gaze of the crowded heavens momentous battles were won and lost on a nightly basis. New life was birthed and warm blood spilled into the hungry sands. The chill air was vivid with the sounds of life and the night had a thousand eyes.

Nick Stokes pulled his heavy, padded jacket a little closer to conserve his body heat before he lowered his body to the thick blanket beneath him. At his right hand lay a thermos of hot coffee half empty. The other half he had consumed and he could feel the stimulant effect as the caffeine flooded his system and the warmth coursed through his body. With a contended sigh he lay back and opened his eyes to the glory above him.

This far out from the city the lights of Vegas were a mere smudge on the distant horizon, the gaudy works of man inconsequential when compared to the beauty of the endless star scape above him.

As a boy growing up on a ranch in Texas the night time sky and the stars that populated it had featured heavily in his thoughts. On warm summer nights he and his father had walked out from the house and its inconvenient lights until they could see the heavens shining above them. Lying in the long grass, the sweet scent of warm earth, sage and mimosa catclaws filling their nostrils, they spent long hours watching the sky turn lazily overhead. With infinite patience and boundless enthusiasm Cisco taught him to recognize the stars and their place in the heavens, filling his young mind with tales of gods and monsters, heroes and battles and tragedy. Sometimes they re-enacted those battles, waging war under the boundless sky. Sometimes they laughed until they cried, other times they were content to bask in the splendour of the night and the peace that came from simply being near to each other. Looking back he could see that those were some of the happiest moments of his life.

After his abduction, after his hellish ordeal in the box, it was his search for a small measure of that childhood peace that had sent him into the desert. If he was honest he could admit that he didn't understand it fully himself. But some instinct, some nameless impulse had turned his feet towards his door and before he knew it he was in his car and driving into the lonely night. That same impulse prompted him to turn off the beaten path, abandoning the highway for quieter, rougher roads.

Once the bustling, noisy world he knew was behind him, Nick had pulled over and after locking up his vehicle, headed out into the desert. He hadn't gone far; after all, he wasn't a fool, but with every step he took from the roadside he had felt some of the weight drop from his shoulders. He knew his friends would be horrified at the thought of him alone out here; they thought he was too vulnerable, too fragile still, but he needed this. What they hadn't understood was that their concern, their protectiveness was smothering him. Sitting in his home he sometimes felt as though he was still trapped inside that premature coffin. Gasping for breath, cut off from the rest of the world, he yearned to feel something other than fear. Here at last he could finally breathe.

Around him, the denizens of the night had gone about their business, mindful of the man in their midst, but otherwise indifferent to his presence. Like a lover's touch the cool air had gently caressed his heated skin, bringing with it a memory of happiness and love on its fragrant wings. The sweet scent of sage and cooling earth soothed his troubled soul. For a moment he had been a child again, his world filled with possibilities and promise instead of responsibility and remorse. He had savored that feeling, clinging with a kind of desperate abandon to the joy of simply being alive and in the stars blazing above he found meaning and forgiveness.

That first night as the cold seeped into his bones he felt more alive than he had in the weeks since his release from the box. In the comfort of suburban life he was disconnected from the elements, cocooned in an artificial womb of air conditioned luxury and chemical relief. He wanted neither. At first he worried that the darkness and the scent of earth would bring back memories of confinement, fear, terror, but they did not. Instead, the desert night was illuminated by a waning moon, the landscape cast in ghostly relief and the night air and the dirt beneath his feet was filled with the sound and scents of life. The smell of the sepulchre was finally chased from his nostrils. His world expanded from the narrow view imposed by his imprisonment and without thinking his right arm had risen above his head reaching out unimpeded in an attempt to touch the vaulted sky. In that one moment, in that inconsequential act of valor the invisible barrier that had separated him from the world fragmented and shattered. He no longer felt detached, removed from the world and himself, but a part of it once more.

His body and soul were suffused with a sense of hopefulness so strong it was almost palpable. In the tender solitude of the blessed night, under the ageless eyes of sentinel stars he found hope

He had remained there drinking in the beauty and the peace of the nocturnal world until dawn's first blush lightened the sky, burnishing the scattered clouds a delicate shade of pink, and the cold drove him back to his vehicle. With the heating turned to maximum he tried to chase away the chill that deadened his limbs, bleeding all sensation from his body. He felt exhausted, and all-in, yet curiously elated. As the night retreated before the nascent sunrise, he retained faith in his emergent hope, and the new genesis of his soul. A smile tugged at his lips then, the first true smile in too long a time, as he had considered his own philosophical thoughts and how his friends would kid him if they only knew what he had done. Warrick would be sure to kid him about finding other activities to fill his nocturnal hours, activities that included cold beers and a warm companion. Catherine would probably have worried that he wasn't getting enough sleep and tried to mother hen him and Grissom would most probably have just shrugged his shoulders and gone back to whatever the hell he was working on. In a way Grissom's imagined reaction was what he longed for most. Because although he had known that his friends had been right to worry, he hadn't liked it. He had hated to be seen as needy or incapable of coping, but that night's revelation had shown him how far he had been from the man he was before and at the same time set him on the path to reclaiming what had been lost.

With that enlightening thought uppermost in his mind, Nick had set course for home, his warm bed and for once a blessedly undisturbed slumber.

So here he is, again. It has become a ritual of sorts. When things get to be too much, when he feels his sense of purpose and humanity beginning to slip away he returns to the desert and the eternal sky. In their uncompromising embrace he finds comfort, security and a memory of innocent optimism that restores his soul. The imperfect world and those in it may try to change him. The evil that he sees may threaten to erode who he is at his very core, but every minute spent under these stars renews him.

In the tender embrace of the blessed night his spirit rejoices, and in the elegant grace of each new dawn hope soars on nimble wings.


End file.
